13 ms·

Calm Technology

463 points by _bxg1 7y ago

efa 7y ago
Can't help but think of one of Homer Simpson's inventions. The "Everything's okay alarm" - a piercing squawk will sound every three seconds unless something isn't okay. https://www.engineering.com/DesignerEdge/DesignerEdgeArticles/ArticleID/17874/Top-10-Engineering-Moments-of-The-Simpsons.aspx https://www.engineering.com/DesignerEdge/DesignerEdgeArticle...
- boomlinde 7y ago
  That reminds me of the local bus/train commuting service. When you searched for a trip in their app, they'd put red warning triangles on delayed departures. Delayed departures are so common here that they eventually started using green warning triangles, to signal that the bus would (probably) be on time.
rohan1024 7y ago
Few days back, I was thinking on similar lines about Instagram. It does not respect norms of our society. Consider this, our society deeply values competence but Instagram does not seem to take it into consideration at all. A user promoting his content or using proper hashtags or generating activity on platform will be promoted more than the user who just posts brilliant photographs. Who I maintain relations with and who I don't is not other people's business similarly who I follow and who I don't follow should not be visible to anyone except me but that is not the case. I can go on and on about similar things but the bottom line is everything on Instagram is designed in a way such that it generates more activity on platform and ultimately more revenue. This is true for almost all the social networks though. A social network that respects norms of our society and does not attempt at maximizing revenue at users expense will probably fill the void left by the existing ones.
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  The app is not a tool to serve you, instead the app turns you into the tool to serve itself.
  - classified 7y ago
    You hit the nail on the head. This is the actual, real, definition of "free" (as in "free to use"). Every instance of that term should be surrounded by red blinking scare quotes.
    - Nextgrid 7y ago
      Or regulation that curbs our outlaws this cancerous business model. If you can't profit without wasting people's time and/or stalking them then you shouldn't be in business. We have regulation that somewhat works (there are exceptions of course and corruption is a thing, but at least there's an attempt) for other negative impacts on society (environmental damage, etc) but absolutely nothing for tech despite these new apps & services turning people into addicted zombies.
  - munificent 7y ago
    It is both. The app takes your attention and divides it up into (A) things you want to give your attention to (people you follow) and (B) things you don't (ads). It's not just about (B). There is a tricky balancing act involved. A company that does too much (B) ends up with an app that users don't like and stop using. A company that does too much (A) produces a beloved app right up until the point that the company runs out of money and folds.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      > A company that does too much (A) produces a beloved app right up until the point that the company runs out of money and folds. Because they have to compete with people doing lots of (B), and giving the app away for free. I'm increasingly feeling that "free + ads/surveillance" is the problem.
- GavinMcG 7y ago
  What void left by the existing ones? Instagram, for example, is going stronger than ever. It's accomplished its goal of generating more and more activity on the platform. What reason do you have for thinking the public at large is worried about the norms of society being maintained?
- homonculus1 7y ago
  The attention economy is fundamentally cancerous. It is based on the premise that actually creating utility is more expensive than simply hijacking your mind with skinner box mechanics.
  - classified 7y ago
    ... or tracking the living shit out of you and selling every private detail they can get hold of.
- pjc50 7y ago
  > our society deeply values competence [citation needed]: we're well into the "public has had enough of experts" era.
  - hawkice 7y ago
    You're very optimistic, thinking it's an era and not a deeply human and permanent aspect of society.
- askafriend 7y ago
  > Few days back, I was thinking on similar lines about Instagram. It does not respect norms of our society. Consider this, our society deeply values competence but Instagram does not seem to take it into consideration at all. I don't think this is quite right. Instagram mirrors society and amplifies it. In fact if anything, Instagram levels the playing field. Now anyone can go on IG and gain an audience. Whereas in the past, you'd have to go through a series of gatekeepers for your work as a photographer to see light of day and get in front of an audience. And that process was much more flawed, and didn't guarantee competence either. Don't get me wrong, Instagram has many problems - but not in the way you're suggesting. > Who I maintain relations with and who I don't is not other people's business similarly who I follow and who I don't follow should not be visible to anyone except me but that is not the case. Then make your profile restricted? You don't have to have a public presence on Instagram. Lots of people lock their account down. > This is true for almost all the social networks though. A social network that respects norms of our society What even are these "norms of our society" that you keep referring to? There are no norms - there are really only moments in time. Whatever bubble you're living in, is simple one possible version of reality even in your own country. Again, you may not like it - but Instagram is a mirror of society in many ways. Norms are changing all the time. There is no guarantee that the "norms" you grew up with as a child will endure through your adulthood and so there shouldn't be an expectation of it either. I'm sure similar arguments you're making were also made for Radio and TV when they were the primary carriers of culture and media.
  - rohan1024 7y ago
    > Instagram mirrors society and amplifies it. Can you give me examples of this? Because I don't see it amplifying anything but its own revenue. I do see it amplifying negative traits of humans though. > Instagram levels the playing field. Now anyone can go on IG and gain an audience. That's what social media is for. In fact, its a basic requirement. > Then make your profile restricted? I have a private account. What about the 200 followers that I have? They can still see what I follow and not long ago they could also see what I like. Why do you even need to show people how many people I am following or how many followers do I have or how many likes I have on my photos. We don't go through life telling everyone how many friends do I have, do we? Some people do want to show it but at least give us the control of these things? > There are no norms - there are really only moments in time. Lost you here.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  It's a social network and honestly one of the most pro-user ones out there. What it's really good at is recreating the web of positive activity that happens when friends meet and share what they've been up to. On all platforms, its home view is that of things you've consciously chosen to curate to see. The home view has both overt and subtle indicators to tell you to leave the app: all the stories to view no longer have the red outline, the post you scroll past says "You're all done". The notion that society rewards high competence people who do not promote is also prima facie nonsense. That is not at all the case, not economically, not socially, nothing. If you want to be seen, you have to promote. Because, let's be honest, your photo is 10x as valuable to your friends because you took it. If I'm looking at the universe of photos, the probability that you took one in the top 20 I want to see today might as well be a measure-zero set and the utility I gain from that photo is such that I need a discovery engine to bring it to me to be worth it. I won't look for it. The cost-benefit is negative as soon as I type in a single search term. But that shaky handheld phonecam video of my friend fucking around with glow poi and hitting my other friend in the face? That is cost-benefit positive at up to 1 hour of search. And that makes sense, because it's a true social network, it's about the digital equivalent of your social circle. Instagram is a magical social network. It is the circle of friends meeting for a Sunday afternoon hangout, your rave crowd, your dorm room buddies. It is happiness incarnate.
noonespecial 7y ago
I can't help but finally thinking "You've got mail!" was a wrong turn for humanity somehow.
- lukey_q 7y ago
  It is kind of funny to compare that early example of a notification, which was likely novel and rare enough to actually be exciting, to today's onslaught of notifications where at least for me it's extremely unlikely that any single notification is anything actually exciting or meaningful
- elweston2 7y ago
  I am becoming more and more convinced that keeping my data and programs on other peoples computers is not a good idea. They can not seem to resist the idea of 'harvesting' information from me to 'monetize' me for a small monthly fee. The PC revolution is over. The smartphone killed it.
  - hk__2 7y ago
    > I am becoming more and more convinced that keeping my data and programs on other peoples computers is not a good idea. They can not seem to resist the idea of 'harvesting' information from me to 'monetize' me for a small monthly fee. This has more to do with “free” services than hosting your data elsewhere.
    - elweston2 7y ago
      My issues is it is that data 'elsewhere' bit that they want. Even when I pay they want to harvest my data. Most of the time it is to do the opposite of what the main article is talking about.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - chungus_khan 7y ago
      If that were the case paid services wouldn't be doing it too. The reason they do is that there is no large enough incentive/consequence to make a convincing argument to leave that revenue on the table. It is neither hosting it elsewhere nor the "free" services which tend to be the worst examples of it, but rather the lack of any financially valid reason not to.
prox 7y ago
Great idea to point attention to this. The number one rule I learned for interfaces is “Don’t interrupt the proceedings” , which means which means the tools should be optimized for the task and don’t burden the user with unwarranted windows, buttons, lights or beeps. Optimize for flow. Recognize the posture of the application.
gandutraveler 7y ago
Tech products starts this way but eventually they need to make profit and then ads take over the product. The only way this works is for paid products.
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  Even paid products or services are not immune. I order a pizza, I have no choice but to provide details since they need them for delivery. Guess what happens next? Yeah, e-mail and SMS spam. I pay hundreds of bucks for a complete Tado system (thermostat, radiator valves, etc). Guess what I get? E-mail spam about discounts for their "new" app which actually has less features than the current one. I buy a PS4 and try to set it up. Even for a few hundred bucks for a new console, there is still bullshit telemetry and other crap I need to opt-out of, not to mention some half-assed attempt at a social network where I have to spend 15 minutes setting everything to "No one can see this" so I can regain some privacy because I have no desire to use the social features. Heck, even some US government agencies (DMV I think) sell your data to scum and you can't even opt out. I can go on and on. We need some actual ethics, and regulation as a fail-safe for cases where the former doesn't work.
  - tomcooks 7y ago
    > I can go on and on. We need some actual ethics, and regulation as a fail-safe for cases where the former doesn't work. Or become an EU resident and use their brilliant data-handling privacy laws
    - Nextgrid 7y ago
      I am in Europe and the GDPR is a joke. You are supposed to first complain to the company itself, give them a month to reply with a satisfactory response, and if not, then escalate to the country's privacy regulator which seems to do absolutely nothing according to my experience. Can you imagine doing all these things every time your privacy is violated (every non-compliant cookie banner, tracker, newsletter, etc)? That would be a full-time job. It's almost like "justice" in the US, in theory you can win, in practice you have no chance unless you have billions to pay lawyers to fight decade-long legal battles on your behalf.
workthrowaway 7y ago
> Sleep Cycle is a mobile application that monitors your sleep and allows you to track times of deep sleep... oh come on. the examples were good so far... why would i need an app to monitor my sleep if i don't have any sleep disorder or similar? i am putting such app in the "need for attention" category.
- jakemal 7y ago
  You cut off the relevant part of the description. It tracks your sleep cycles so it can wake you up when your are naturally in a light part of your sleep cycle. That way you aren't going from a dead sleep to being jolted awake by an alarm. I used it for years and really liked it.
- DiabloD3 7y ago
  Not only that, why plug Sleep Cycle and not Sleep for Android? I use it to quantify my sleep to actually understand my incredibly odd non-24hr sleep cycle, and do so to actually put technology to a non-interfering, but useful, role.
- bovermyer 7y ago
  You are not the target audience for this if you don't see its utility. Ironically, in your own dismissive response you give a good reason for the app's existence.
- RankingMember 7y ago
  I felt the same, but some of the comments here have enlightened me as to the reasoning (helps keep you from going from a dead sleep to being jolted awake by an alarm), so thanks for raising this question!
kickscondor 7y ago
Going to plug my project Fraidycat here. Feels like it satisfies many of these. http://fraidyc.at/ http://fraidyc.at/ It compiles RSS feeds and YouTube, Twitter, etc into a dashboard-like view rather than a crowded timeline. No notifications, no algorithm. Just a tool for a human. Easy to “move into the periphery”. Very calm, even when I’m following 100s of people.
- tomcooks 7y ago
  EST! EST!! EST!!! The explanatory video alone is a gem, the fact that this extension is open source is a juicy bonus, the coziness factor is sky-high. From a person that doesn't install any extension ever: great concept, amazing execution, installed right meow. PS: How much money would you need to program a CLI version of this that I could host, and run forever and ever, on a tiny VPS?
  - Normal_gaussian 7y ago
    Are you asking for a CLI interface that you access via SSH, or simply something you can execute and access the web interface for?
    - kickscondor 7y ago
      Perhaps I should break out the central library so people can add whatever other interfaces on top of it.
  - kashyapc 7y ago
    What is "EST"? I know it's not the timezone. Given the frantic exclamation marks, probably it is "Everyone Stands Together" (had to look up: "EST + Urban Dictionary").
    - jdminhbg 7y ago
      I assume this is the reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Est!_Est!!_Est!!!_di_Montefiascone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Est!_Est!!_Est!!!_di_Montefias... > The unusual name of the wine region dates back to a 12th-century tale of a German bishop traveling to the Vatican for a meeting with the pope. The bishop sent a prelate ahead of him to survey the villages along the route for the best wines. The 'wine scout' had instructions to write 'Est' (Latin for 'There is') on the door or on the wall of the inns he visited when he was particularly impressed with the quality of the wine they served so the bishop following on his trail would have known in advance where to make a stop. At a Montefiascone inn, the prelate was reportedly so overwhelmed with the local wine that he wrote Est! Est!! Est!!! on the door.
m52go 7y ago
The Android app for 100 Million Books is meant to abide by these principles...to the point I thought it made sense to call it an "anti-app"! I see Calm's purpose seems to extend far beyond smartphone apps and consumer technology, but I was hoping more people would create "anti-apps" when I created mine, and it it seems like Calm is doing a better job than me of pushing for such things. https://100millionbooks.org/blog/news/android-app-err-anti-app-announcement/ https://100millionbooks.org/blog/news/android-app-err-anti-a...
jordanpg 7y ago
I love this philosophy. Ideals to strive for. It is self-evident to me that once we get past these salad days, this spasm of raw capitalism, "content", and absurd business models, internet tech will approach a new equilibrium where it is something that is in the background, always present, but never seen, like a utility. Maybe 10 years, maybe 100, but the sooner the better: a world filled with pinging "push notifications" and advertisements is not one I would want to gift to future generations.
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  Check out Hyper Reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs
motohagiography 7y ago
The opposite of calm tech could be called something like hustle tech, where the interfaces create user stress by opening cognitive loops. Nagging indicators, garden path personal information extraction, leveraging users time investment, Nir Eyal's "hooked model" designs, automated sales pipelining (or spam), dark patterns, etc. Funny that some startups by middle class people thought "hustle," meant energetic teamwork like on a kids sports team, whereas if you had any street smarts at all, hustle means getting leverage over someone by pre-empting their ability to reason accurately, often by bullying, nagging, feigning offence, and exploiting their agreeableness by making them think they "owe," you. Preying on human goodness like reciprocity, empathy, fairness, and agreeableness is basically what a hustler and hustle tech does.
- mindfulgeek 7y ago
  I so got hustled this morning. Not by tech, but by a human. Thank you for giving a word to the experience.
- mc_blue 7y ago
  Why can't there be multiple definitions for hustle? I agree that your street smart definition is valid, but I also think that energetic teamwork is an equally valid definition.
  - motohagiography 7y ago
    Because when you say one and mean the other, it legitimizes the wrong kind of behaviour, and people don't have the words to describe it so they check out and call it "toxic."
  - jstummbillig 7y ago
    Well, there are multiple definitions of hustle. They keep changing with the times and also depending on who you talk to. What one party might consider "selling", another might consider "being preyed upon". What one might consider "courteous", another might consider "sexist". We are so eager to try and find a neat place for all our interactions. It never works like that. Pretty much everything ends up being relative. Anywho, as far as definitions go "energetic teamwork" to me does not really qualify, because hustling in any commonly used sense is not at all required to be a team effort.
cykod 7y ago
I switched to the Android Headspace app recently and the juxtaposition of what they're trying to achieve (meditation / mindfulness and being in the moment) with the onslaught of unasked-for notifications, sometimes when I was already asleep, was jarring. They should be a poster boy for Calm Technology, but Tech just can't seem to help itself.
- gtirloni 7y ago
  That was my experience as well. I've switched to Insight Timer.
  - bostonvaulter2 7y ago
    Can you disable the cloud features on that now? I stopped using it when they forced that on everyone. I had even paid for it previously.
- albertshin 7y ago
  You can turn them all off in Android by just going to settings and disabling that specific app's notifications. Perhaps some people desire (or even need) the unasked-for notification to start the meditation session they forgot about last week. Let's not throw out optionality.
jmstfv 7y ago
It boils down to incentives. When entire business models are built around hijacking your attention and keeping you "hooked" for as long as possible, you can't expect calm technology. Vote with your wallet.
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  Voting with your wallet isn’t always an option when the advertising cancer has already infected everything. See my earlier comment for some expensive examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21802985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21802985
  - jmstfv 7y ago
    The more generalizable version of "vote with your wallet" is to stop using those services, if possible. Eventually, those companies will either stop engaging in this behaviour or die.
- smacktoward 7y ago
  "Vote with your wallet" doesn't work when one party rigs the election by giving away their product for free.
  - shantly 7y ago
    The thing is, I'm pretty sure "free" spyvertising-funded stuff harms both paid and actually free, as in non-commercial, solutions. The market for the former is reduced significantly, and with the demand/audience for the latter also hollowed out, the incentive to work on them is reduced, in a feedback loop (worse actually-free product or service, more users go to the spying one, repeat). I've seen a company try to build a streaming/DVR box. It failed for a bunch of reasons but among those was that it wasn't expected/able to spy on the user and monetize the data—all its competitors did, and they all sold their devices, retail, for right at what these devices would cost the manufacturer to build them (in part, but not entirely, because they're subsidized by spying), so if they wanted to make any money and wanted to actually get on store shelves (often a minimum margin required) they were talking a significantly higher price; meanwhile most people aren't even aware that their competitors are spying on their users in some super-creepy ways, so that's a really hard sell, especially if you aren't already at or beyond feature parity.
ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
This is nice. Thanks for sharing it.
Neil44 7y ago
Notifications should be renamed to Interruptions IMO
soneca 7y ago
I am currently building a personal journal app will become what I calling a "quiet social network" [0]. The idea seems similar of this calm tech, although they are talking more about hardware. I am on the fence about notifications though. They can be very useful for the user. I am planning to add notifications, but probably all off by default, and the user decides very granularly what they want on. Does it seem the right approach? I would appreciate any opinion [0] https://www.quidsentio.com https://www.quidsentio.com
- floren 7y ago
  What about a notification digest, where the user gets a list of updates every (day|week|<configured duration>)? Perhaps after explicitly requesting to receive updates about so-and-so. This allows the user to decide, "At 20:00 each night, I'll get a list of new stuff from my friends, and I'll take some time and peruse it," rather than getting blasted at odd times.
  - soneca 7y ago
    That's a good idea. I'll give a lot of thought into the UX of this still, specially around the trade-off customization vs simplicity. Digests are good for simplicity, and I like it. A simple opt-in setting and you are all set.
  - mustacheemperor 7y ago
    I wish this was an OS level feature on my phone and computer. I will often disable notifications from, for example, Slack on the weekends, and every time I do I silently wish there were a way to automatically control notifications per app based on time and day.
- jes5199 7y ago
  there are so many problems with our norms around social networks that I don't know where to start, but two of the worst for my brain are: 1) getting interrupted when I'm thinking about something else 2) the slot-machine-like intermittent reward feeling of checking constantly. and those two together mean that my phone is constantly saying "hey! stop what you're doing and lose an hour in the distraction engine!"
sholladay 7y ago
Car dashboard lights meet most of these criteria and yet they are routinely bad. My partner had trouble figuring out the "flat tire" icon and they are a fairly intelligent, well-educated person. The icon was basically a circle with an exclamation point inside. The fact that it had a slightly flat edge actually made it harder to recognize as a wheel since we normally associate wheels as being perfectly round. It almost looked more like a steering wheel. There was no status code to look up, only an icon which they had to match visually against every other possible icon. And this is one of the most common warning lights to appear in a car, so imagine how much harder the more obscure ones are. Roombas, which the article mentions don't use voice, actually did start using voice in the last couple of generations. And it's great. It tells you that it's stuck rather than just beeping sadly at you. I'm not necessarily saying the car dashboard should speak warnings, as it may startle people on the highway, but I also think there's a lot to improve on.
- notatoad 7y ago
  the tire pressure indicator light (and most of the other lights on a car dashboard) is one of those icons that isn't necessarily easy to decode, but it's ubiquitous enough that changing it to something new would be worse. Maybe your partner didn't know what it means, but enough other people do that odds are the first person they asked would have been able to tell them.
- davidwitt415 7y ago
  Here's one explanation: I work as an HMI designer for an Automotive OEM. Since we have a fully digital driver display, I designed a feature to address your problem; it displayed a large graphic with a text explanation of what was happening. Unfortunately, it was killed by our Customer Care team, who were, paradoxically, more concerned about giving the driver/customer negative information that might lead to complaints, buybacks, etc. Needless to say, there are many stories like this, and it shows that even though UX/UI design is the most apparent aspect of a product, it is only as good as the decisions made underneath it.
- nickloewen 7y ago
  I recently rode in a car which, when started, lit up the dashboard display with the message “Correct tire pressure.” That took a moment to decipher, too. (Is the pressure correct, or am I supposed to correct it? And if you have sensors in all the tires to tell me that one’s flat—why not mention that info in the error message?) Evidently clearly stating “your tire is flat” is a big challenge for car designers...
zubairq 7y ago
I love this and I will try to make our product, yazz Pilot abide by these principles
munificent 7y ago
> Technology should require the smallest possible amount of attention The challenge — and I believe this is one of the fundamental challenges of the Information Age — is that the business model of most companies making tech today is that user attention funds the development of the technology. Every ad-driven business rests on this trade: We give you software X and in return you give Y% fraction of your attention. We sell that attention to company Z which pays us in cash. Tech from these companies cannot reduce the amount of attention the software consumes without directly affecting their bottom line and their ability to deliver tech to users in the first place.
- danfang 7y ago
  I would like to think we’re heading toward a future where people will want to pay for products and services to reclaim their attention - as opposed to using free ones that deliberately track and optimize for your engagement. The past 15 years of social media has been a terrible experiment in attention-driven business models. I’d like to think I’m helping buck this trend with my current project - a subscription based social network called Thread - https://get.thread-app.com https://get.thread-app.com
  - jkestner 7y ago
    I'd like to think that too, but most people don't have the money or inclination for calm tech. We want distractions from the uncomfortable truths, and Facebook is happy to provide distraction with comfortable "truths."
jes5199 7y ago
Calm Tech is one of those ideas that's been in floating around for decades but has never quite gotten the attention it deserves (... sort of a funny paradox, "pay attention to making tools you don't have to pay attention to"). This article doesn't mention some of the old standard examples: Live Wire was a sculpture at Xerox Parc that twitched every time some number of network packets went through the office's router - you could get an intuitive feel for how much load was on the system. There's an X Windows applet called "LavaPS" which shows all your unix processes as colored blobs in a lavalamp, sized by memory footprint, floating to the top by age. It gives you a quick impression of what your computer is doing - is one webserver process eating your whole core? Or are you getting forkbombed by thousands of little ones? Those look really different. The definitive works on Calm Computing are a paper written by Mark Weiser (RIP) in 1996, "Designing Calm Technology" (which has unfortunately fallen off the internet) and an O'Reilly book called "Calm Technology" by Amber Case (the Cyborg Anthropologist) Ideally we'd go calmer than a "status light" or "status tone" - those are still pretty active! What can you convey with the color of a Phillips Hue bulb that changes slowly?
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Status tones made me immediately think of Star Trek. Imagine what if everything around you used status tones - the ambience will start to resemble that of a starship bridge in Star Trek - lots of things constantly humming and beeping in the background in a calming way (until there's some emergency, that is).
- GuiA 7y ago
  > a paper written by Mark Weiser (RIP) in 1996, "Designing Calm Technology" (which has unfortunately fallen off the internet) https://people.csail.mit.edu/rudolph/Teaching/weiser.pdf https://people.csail.mit.edu/rudolph/Teaching/weiser.pdf ?
  - andai 7y ago
    And html version :) https://www.karlstechnology.com/blog/designing-calm-technology/ https://www.karlstechnology.com/blog/designing-calm-technolo...
arthurofbabylon 7y ago
I particularly appreciate this -> "Technology should make use of the periphery... A calm technology will move easily from the periphery of our attention, to the center, and back." And this -> "Machines shouldn't act like humans. Humans shouldn't act like machines. Amplify the best part of each."
mkadlec 7y ago
Adheres to Tethics.
chrismorgan 7y ago
A technical issue on the website: html { overflow-y: scroll; } body { overflow-x: hidden; } This makes both the <html> and <body> elements scrolling areas, so that you see two scrollbars (the outermost one disabled), and keyboard scrolling doesn’t work until you click within the body. Simplest fix is to shift the overflow-x: hidden to the html element, or remove it altogether.
boomlinde 7y ago
The vast majority of technology doesn’t need to notify you or somehow artificially announce its status. It seems strange, then, that a site on calm technology primarily concerns technology that does, devoting a good portion of the page to promoting ”calm communication” through buzzing, beeping and blinking. We should instead question whether we need the information that is being communicated in the first place, because even a colored LED or a soft haptic buzz can be stressful when we know what they mean. Maybe we should minimize the use of such technology instead. In my view, calm technology only functions when you use it. It answers your questions or solves your problems only when prompted to do so. Maybe a robot vacuum cleaner that beeps on faults and vacuums on its own initiative is helpful technology, but with alternatives that won’t have any reasons to steal your attention I can’t say that it’s calm technology. IM with a soft haptic buzz to notify you of the receipt of a message may again be immensely helpful, but an email account that I check myself when I feel like reading messages is more calm. If your life seems calmer when you know exactly when you’ve received a message regardless of what you are doing at the time or the nature of its content, you should perhaps think of how to lead a calm life before worrying about whether a pleasant beep or a soft buzz is the best way to direct your attention to it.
- Razengan 7y ago
  > We should instead question whether we need the information that is being communicated in the first place, because even a colored LED or a soft haptic buzz can be stressful when we know what they mean. Maybe we should minimize the use of such technology instead. This is why I love Apple for pretty much eliminating blinking lights in their devices, while other manufactures of laptops etc. still don't seem to get it. The only lights remaining in my room at bedtime are the power strip and external hard disks, and even they can be annoying.
- m-p-3 7y ago
  I have a dashboard at work to help me monitor a bunch of systems, but I still have a small BlinkStick LED cube attached to a Raspberry Pi Zero (probably overkill, I used what I was comfortable with) and it changes the LED color depending on a system status warning or failure. I already receive enough email that I filter to different categories, but having the LED bring my attention to the right place is way less stressful IMO.
dpflug 7y ago
I realize I'm well late to this discussion, but Huginn seems to be a good tool for this: https://github.com/huginn/huginn https://github.com/huginn/huginn
mrarjen 7y ago
Wish my Sony headphones had this for when switching modes or battery low indications. Currently it will mute all sound and speak in a voice regarding what is going on with limited info, instead of some clear beeps. Get to the point tech!
teddyh 7y ago
This seems to be a continuation of “Designing Calm Technology” by Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown in 1995: https://calmtech.com/papers/designing-calm-technology.html https://calmtech.com/papers/designing-calm-technology.html
p0nce 7y ago
How about Calm businesses and Calm codebases. "Code should need the least possible amount of knowledge and attention"

463 points by _bxg1 7y ago

efa 7y ago

Can't help but think of one of Homer Simpson's inventions. The "Everything's okay alarm" - a piercing squawk will sound every three seconds unless something isn't okay. https://www.engineering.com/DesignerEdge/DesignerEdgeArticles/ArticleID/17874/Top-10-Engineering-Moments-of-The-Simpsons.aspx https://www.engineering.com/DesignerEdge/DesignerEdgeArticle...

boomlinde 7y ago
That reminds me of the local bus/train commuting service. When you searched for a trip in their app, they'd put red warning triangles on delayed departures. Delayed departures are so common here that they eventually started using green warning triangles, to signal that the bus would (probably) be on time.

rohan1024 7y ago

Few days back, I was thinking on similar lines about Instagram. It does not respect norms of our society. Consider this, our society deeply values competence but Instagram does not seem to take it into consideration at all. A user promoting his content or using proper hashtags or generating activity on platform will be promoted more than the user who just posts brilliant photographs. Who I maintain relations with and who I don't is not other people's business similarly who I follow and who I don't follow should not be visible to anyone except me but that is not the case. I can go on and on about similar things but the bottom line is everything on Instagram is designed in a way such that it generates more activity on platform and ultimately more revenue. This is true for almost all the social networks though. A social network that respects norms of our society and does not attempt at maximizing revenue at users expense will probably fill the void left by the existing ones.

Nextgrid 7y ago
The app is not a tool to serve you, instead the app turns you into the tool to serve itself.
- classified 7y ago
  You hit the nail on the head. This is the actual, real, definition of "free" (as in "free to use"). Every instance of that term should be surrounded by red blinking scare quotes.
  - Nextgrid 7y ago
    Or regulation that curbs our outlaws this cancerous business model. If you can't profit without wasting people's time and/or stalking them then you shouldn't be in business. We have regulation that somewhat works (there are exceptions of course and corruption is a thing, but at least there's an attempt) for other negative impacts on society (environmental damage, etc) but absolutely nothing for tech despite these new apps & services turning people into addicted zombies.
- munificent 7y ago
  It is both. The app takes your attention and divides it up into (A) things you want to give your attention to (people you follow) and (B) things you don't (ads). It's not just about (B). There is a tricky balancing act involved. A company that does too much (B) ends up with an app that users don't like and stop using. A company that does too much (A) produces a beloved app right up until the point that the company runs out of money and folds.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > A company that does too much (A) produces a beloved app right up until the point that the company runs out of money and folds. Because they have to compete with people doing lots of (B), and giving the app away for free. I'm increasingly feeling that "free + ads/surveillance" is the problem.
GavinMcG 7y ago
What void left by the existing ones? Instagram, for example, is going stronger than ever. It's accomplished its goal of generating more and more activity on the platform. What reason do you have for thinking the public at large is worried about the norms of society being maintained?
homonculus1 7y ago
The attention economy is fundamentally cancerous. It is based on the premise that actually creating utility is more expensive than simply hijacking your mind with skinner box mechanics.
- classified 7y ago
  ... or tracking the living shit out of you and selling every private detail they can get hold of.
pjc50 7y ago
> our society deeply values competence [citation needed]: we're well into the "public has had enough of experts" era.
- hawkice 7y ago
  You're very optimistic, thinking it's an era and not a deeply human and permanent aspect of society.
askafriend 7y ago
> Few days back, I was thinking on similar lines about Instagram. It does not respect norms of our society. Consider this, our society deeply values competence but Instagram does not seem to take it into consideration at all. I don't think this is quite right. Instagram mirrors society and amplifies it. In fact if anything, Instagram levels the playing field. Now anyone can go on IG and gain an audience. Whereas in the past, you'd have to go through a series of gatekeepers for your work as a photographer to see light of day and get in front of an audience. And that process was much more flawed, and didn't guarantee competence either. Don't get me wrong, Instagram has many problems - but not in the way you're suggesting. > Who I maintain relations with and who I don't is not other people's business similarly who I follow and who I don't follow should not be visible to anyone except me but that is not the case. Then make your profile restricted? You don't have to have a public presence on Instagram. Lots of people lock their account down. > This is true for almost all the social networks though. A social network that respects norms of our society What even are these "norms of our society" that you keep referring to? There are no norms - there are really only moments in time. Whatever bubble you're living in, is simple one possible version of reality even in your own country. Again, you may not like it - but Instagram is a mirror of society in many ways. Norms are changing all the time. There is no guarantee that the "norms" you grew up with as a child will endure through your adulthood and so there shouldn't be an expectation of it either. I'm sure similar arguments you're making were also made for Radio and TV when they were the primary carriers of culture and media.
- rohan1024 7y ago
  > Instagram mirrors society and amplifies it. Can you give me examples of this? Because I don't see it amplifying anything but its own revenue. I do see it amplifying negative traits of humans though. > Instagram levels the playing field. Now anyone can go on IG and gain an audience. That's what social media is for. In fact, its a basic requirement. > Then make your profile restricted? I have a private account. What about the 200 followers that I have? They can still see what I follow and not long ago they could also see what I like. Why do you even need to show people how many people I am following or how many followers do I have or how many likes I have on my photos. We don't go through life telling everyone how many friends do I have, do we? Some people do want to show it but at least give us the control of these things? > There are no norms - there are really only moments in time. Lost you here.
scarejunba 7y ago
It's a social network and honestly one of the most pro-user ones out there. What it's really good at is recreating the web of positive activity that happens when friends meet and share what they've been up to. On all platforms, its home view is that of things you've consciously chosen to curate to see. The home view has both overt and subtle indicators to tell you to leave the app: all the stories to view no longer have the red outline, the post you scroll past says "You're all done". The notion that society rewards high competence people who do not promote is also prima facie nonsense. That is not at all the case, not economically, not socially, nothing. If you want to be seen, you have to promote. Because, let's be honest, your photo is 10x as valuable to your friends because you took it. If I'm looking at the universe of photos, the probability that you took one in the top 20 I want to see today might as well be a measure-zero set and the utility I gain from that photo is such that I need a discovery engine to bring it to me to be worth it. I won't look for it. The cost-benefit is negative as soon as I type in a single search term. But that shaky handheld phonecam video of my friend fucking around with glow poi and hitting my other friend in the face? That is cost-benefit positive at up to 1 hour of search. And that makes sense, because it's a true social network, it's about the digital equivalent of your social circle. Instagram is a magical social network. It is the circle of friends meeting for a Sunday afternoon hangout, your rave crowd, your dorm room buddies. It is happiness incarnate.

noonespecial 7y ago

I can't help but finally thinking "You've got mail!" was a wrong turn for humanity somehow.

lukey_q 7y ago
It is kind of funny to compare that early example of a notification, which was likely novel and rare enough to actually be exciting, to today's onslaught of notifications where at least for me it's extremely unlikely that any single notification is anything actually exciting or meaningful
elweston2 7y ago
I am becoming more and more convinced that keeping my data and programs on other peoples computers is not a good idea. They can not seem to resist the idea of 'harvesting' information from me to 'monetize' me for a small monthly fee. The PC revolution is over. The smartphone killed it.
- hk__2 7y ago
  > I am becoming more and more convinced that keeping my data and programs on other peoples computers is not a good idea. They can not seem to resist the idea of 'harvesting' information from me to 'monetize' me for a small monthly fee. This has more to do with “free” services than hosting your data elsewhere.
  - elweston2 7y ago
    My issues is it is that data 'elsewhere' bit that they want. Even when I pay they want to harvest my data. Most of the time it is to do the opposite of what the main article is talking about.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - chungus_khan 7y ago
    If that were the case paid services wouldn't be doing it too. The reason they do is that there is no large enough incentive/consequence to make a convincing argument to leave that revenue on the table. It is neither hosting it elsewhere nor the "free" services which tend to be the worst examples of it, but rather the lack of any financially valid reason not to.

prox 7y ago

Great idea to point attention to this. The number one rule I learned for interfaces is “Don’t interrupt the proceedings” , which means which means the tools should be optimized for the task and don’t burden the user with unwarranted windows, buttons, lights or beeps. Optimize for flow. Recognize the posture of the application.

gandutraveler 7y ago

Tech products starts this way but eventually they need to make profit and then ads take over the product. The only way this works is for paid products.

Nextgrid 7y ago
Even paid products or services are not immune. I order a pizza, I have no choice but to provide details since they need them for delivery. Guess what happens next? Yeah, e-mail and SMS spam. I pay hundreds of bucks for a complete Tado system (thermostat, radiator valves, etc). Guess what I get? E-mail spam about discounts for their "new" app which actually has less features than the current one. I buy a PS4 and try to set it up. Even for a few hundred bucks for a new console, there is still bullshit telemetry and other crap I need to opt-out of, not to mention some half-assed attempt at a social network where I have to spend 15 minutes setting everything to "No one can see this" so I can regain some privacy because I have no desire to use the social features. Heck, even some US government agencies (DMV I think) sell your data to scum and you can't even opt out. I can go on and on. We need some actual ethics, and regulation as a fail-safe for cases where the former doesn't work.
- tomcooks 7y ago
  > I can go on and on. We need some actual ethics, and regulation as a fail-safe for cases where the former doesn't work. Or become an EU resident and use their brilliant data-handling privacy laws
  - Nextgrid 7y ago
    I am in Europe and the GDPR is a joke. You are supposed to first complain to the company itself, give them a month to reply with a satisfactory response, and if not, then escalate to the country's privacy regulator which seems to do absolutely nothing according to my experience. Can you imagine doing all these things every time your privacy is violated (every non-compliant cookie banner, tracker, newsletter, etc)? That would be a full-time job. It's almost like "justice" in the US, in theory you can win, in practice you have no chance unless you have billions to pay lawyers to fight decade-long legal battles on your behalf.

workthrowaway 7y ago

> Sleep Cycle is a mobile application that monitors your sleep and allows you to track times of deep sleep... oh come on. the examples were good so far... why would i need an app to monitor my sleep if i don't have any sleep disorder or similar? i am putting such app in the "need for attention" category.

jakemal 7y ago
You cut off the relevant part of the description. It tracks your sleep cycles so it can wake you up when your are naturally in a light part of your sleep cycle. That way you aren't going from a dead sleep to being jolted awake by an alarm. I used it for years and really liked it.
DiabloD3 7y ago
Not only that, why plug Sleep Cycle and not Sleep for Android? I use it to quantify my sleep to actually understand my incredibly odd non-24hr sleep cycle, and do so to actually put technology to a non-interfering, but useful, role.
bovermyer 7y ago
You are not the target audience for this if you don't see its utility. Ironically, in your own dismissive response you give a good reason for the app's existence.
RankingMember 7y ago
I felt the same, but some of the comments here have enlightened me as to the reasoning (helps keep you from going from a dead sleep to being jolted awake by an alarm), so thanks for raising this question!

kickscondor 7y ago

Going to plug my project Fraidycat here. Feels like it satisfies many of these. http://fraidyc.at/ http://fraidyc.at/ It compiles RSS feeds and YouTube, Twitter, etc into a dashboard-like view rather than a crowded timeline. No notifications, no algorithm. Just a tool for a human. Easy to “move into the periphery”. Very calm, even when I’m following 100s of people.

tomcooks 7y ago
EST! EST!! EST!!! The explanatory video alone is a gem, the fact that this extension is open source is a juicy bonus, the coziness factor is sky-high. From a person that doesn't install any extension ever: great concept, amazing execution, installed right meow. PS: How much money would you need to program a CLI version of this that I could host, and run forever and ever, on a tiny VPS?
- Normal_gaussian 7y ago
  Are you asking for a CLI interface that you access via SSH, or simply something you can execute and access the web interface for?
  - kickscondor 7y ago
    Perhaps I should break out the central library so people can add whatever other interfaces on top of it.
- kashyapc 7y ago
  What is "EST"? I know it's not the timezone. Given the frantic exclamation marks, probably it is "Everyone Stands Together" (had to look up: "EST + Urban Dictionary").
  - jdminhbg 7y ago
    I assume this is the reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Est!_Est!!_Est!!!_di_Montefiascone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Est!_Est!!_Est!!!_di_Montefias... > The unusual name of the wine region dates back to a 12th-century tale of a German bishop traveling to the Vatican for a meeting with the pope. The bishop sent a prelate ahead of him to survey the villages along the route for the best wines. The 'wine scout' had instructions to write 'Est' (Latin for 'There is') on the door or on the wall of the inns he visited when he was particularly impressed with the quality of the wine they served so the bishop following on his trail would have known in advance where to make a stop. At a Montefiascone inn, the prelate was reportedly so overwhelmed with the local wine that he wrote Est! Est!! Est!!! on the door.

m52go 7y ago

The Android app for 100 Million Books is meant to abide by these principles...to the point I thought it made sense to call it an "anti-app"! I see Calm's purpose seems to extend far beyond smartphone apps and consumer technology, but I was hoping more people would create "anti-apps" when I created mine, and it it seems like Calm is doing a better job than me of pushing for such things. https://100millionbooks.org/blog/news/android-app-err-anti-app-announcement/ https://100millionbooks.org/blog/news/android-app-err-anti-a...

jordanpg 7y ago

I love this philosophy. Ideals to strive for. It is self-evident to me that once we get past these salad days, this spasm of raw capitalism, "content", and absurd business models, internet tech will approach a new equilibrium where it is something that is in the background, always present, but never seen, like a utility. Maybe 10 years, maybe 100, but the sooner the better: a world filled with pinging "push notifications" and advertisements is not one I would want to gift to future generations.

Nextgrid 7y ago
Check out Hyper Reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs

motohagiography 7y ago

The opposite of calm tech could be called something like hustle tech, where the interfaces create user stress by opening cognitive loops. Nagging indicators, garden path personal information extraction, leveraging users time investment, Nir Eyal's "hooked model" designs, automated sales pipelining (or spam), dark patterns, etc. Funny that some startups by middle class people thought "hustle," meant energetic teamwork like on a kids sports team, whereas if you had any street smarts at all, hustle means getting leverage over someone by pre-empting their ability to reason accurately, often by bullying, nagging, feigning offence, and exploiting their agreeableness by making them think they "owe," you. Preying on human goodness like reciprocity, empathy, fairness, and agreeableness is basically what a hustler and hustle tech does.

mindfulgeek 7y ago
I so got hustled this morning. Not by tech, but by a human. Thank you for giving a word to the experience.
mc_blue 7y ago
Why can't there be multiple definitions for hustle? I agree that your street smart definition is valid, but I also think that energetic teamwork is an equally valid definition.
- motohagiography 7y ago
  Because when you say one and mean the other, it legitimizes the wrong kind of behaviour, and people don't have the words to describe it so they check out and call it "toxic."
- jstummbillig 7y ago
  Well, there are multiple definitions of hustle. They keep changing with the times and also depending on who you talk to. What one party might consider "selling", another might consider "being preyed upon". What one might consider "courteous", another might consider "sexist". We are so eager to try and find a neat place for all our interactions. It never works like that. Pretty much everything ends up being relative. Anywho, as far as definitions go "energetic teamwork" to me does not really qualify, because hustling in any commonly used sense is not at all required to be a team effort.

cykod 7y ago

I switched to the Android Headspace app recently and the juxtaposition of what they're trying to achieve (meditation / mindfulness and being in the moment) with the onslaught of unasked-for notifications, sometimes when I was already asleep, was jarring. They should be a poster boy for Calm Technology, but Tech just can't seem to help itself.

gtirloni 7y ago
That was my experience as well. I've switched to Insight Timer.
- bostonvaulter2 7y ago
  Can you disable the cloud features on that now? I stopped using it when they forced that on everyone. I had even paid for it previously.
albertshin 7y ago
You can turn them all off in Android by just going to settings and disabling that specific app's notifications. Perhaps some people desire (or even need) the unasked-for notification to start the meditation session they forgot about last week. Let's not throw out optionality.

jmstfv 7y ago

It boils down to incentives. When entire business models are built around hijacking your attention and keeping you "hooked" for as long as possible, you can't expect calm technology. Vote with your wallet.

Nextgrid 7y ago
Voting with your wallet isn’t always an option when the advertising cancer has already infected everything. See my earlier comment for some expensive examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21802985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21802985
- jmstfv 7y ago
  The more generalizable version of "vote with your wallet" is to stop using those services, if possible. Eventually, those companies will either stop engaging in this behaviour or die.
smacktoward 7y ago
"Vote with your wallet" doesn't work when one party rigs the election by giving away their product for free.
- shantly 7y ago
  The thing is, I'm pretty sure "free" spyvertising-funded stuff harms both paid and actually free, as in non-commercial, solutions. The market for the former is reduced significantly, and with the demand/audience for the latter also hollowed out, the incentive to work on them is reduced, in a feedback loop (worse actually-free product or service, more users go to the spying one, repeat). I've seen a company try to build a streaming/DVR box. It failed for a bunch of reasons but among those was that it wasn't expected/able to spy on the user and monetize the data—all its competitors did, and they all sold their devices, retail, for right at what these devices would cost the manufacturer to build them (in part, but not entirely, because they're subsidized by spying), so if they wanted to make any money and wanted to actually get on store shelves (often a minimum margin required) they were talking a significantly higher price; meanwhile most people aren't even aware that their competitors are spying on their users in some super-creepy ways, so that's a really hard sell, especially if you aren't already at or beyond feature parity.

ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago

This is nice. Thanks for sharing it.

Neil44 7y ago

Notifications should be renamed to Interruptions IMO

soneca 7y ago

I am currently building a personal journal app will become what I calling a "quiet social network" [0]. The idea seems similar of this calm tech, although they are talking more about hardware. I am on the fence about notifications though. They can be very useful for the user. I am planning to add notifications, but probably all off by default, and the user decides very granularly what they want on. Does it seem the right approach? I would appreciate any opinion [0] https://www.quidsentio.com https://www.quidsentio.com

floren 7y ago
What about a notification digest, where the user gets a list of updates every (day|week|<configured duration>)? Perhaps after explicitly requesting to receive updates about so-and-so. This allows the user to decide, "At 20:00 each night, I'll get a list of new stuff from my friends, and I'll take some time and peruse it," rather than getting blasted at odd times.
- soneca 7y ago
  That's a good idea. I'll give a lot of thought into the UX of this still, specially around the trade-off customization vs simplicity. Digests are good for simplicity, and I like it. A simple opt-in setting and you are all set.
- mustacheemperor 7y ago
  I wish this was an OS level feature on my phone and computer. I will often disable notifications from, for example, Slack on the weekends, and every time I do I silently wish there were a way to automatically control notifications per app based on time and day.
jes5199 7y ago
there are so many problems with our norms around social networks that I don't know where to start, but two of the worst for my brain are: 1) getting interrupted when I'm thinking about something else 2) the slot-machine-like intermittent reward feeling of checking constantly. and those two together mean that my phone is constantly saying "hey! stop what you're doing and lose an hour in the distraction engine!"

sholladay 7y ago

Car dashboard lights meet most of these criteria and yet they are routinely bad. My partner had trouble figuring out the "flat tire" icon and they are a fairly intelligent, well-educated person. The icon was basically a circle with an exclamation point inside. The fact that it had a slightly flat edge actually made it harder to recognize as a wheel since we normally associate wheels as being perfectly round. It almost looked more like a steering wheel. There was no status code to look up, only an icon which they had to match visually against every other possible icon. And this is one of the most common warning lights to appear in a car, so imagine how much harder the more obscure ones are. Roombas, which the article mentions don't use voice, actually did start using voice in the last couple of generations. And it's great. It tells you that it's stuck rather than just beeping sadly at you. I'm not necessarily saying the car dashboard should speak warnings, as it may startle people on the highway, but I also think there's a lot to improve on.

notatoad 7y ago
the tire pressure indicator light (and most of the other lights on a car dashboard) is one of those icons that isn't necessarily easy to decode, but it's ubiquitous enough that changing it to something new would be worse. Maybe your partner didn't know what it means, but enough other people do that odds are the first person they asked would have been able to tell them.
davidwitt415 7y ago
Here's one explanation: I work as an HMI designer for an Automotive OEM. Since we have a fully digital driver display, I designed a feature to address your problem; it displayed a large graphic with a text explanation of what was happening. Unfortunately, it was killed by our Customer Care team, who were, paradoxically, more concerned about giving the driver/customer negative information that might lead to complaints, buybacks, etc. Needless to say, there are many stories like this, and it shows that even though UX/UI design is the most apparent aspect of a product, it is only as good as the decisions made underneath it.
nickloewen 7y ago
I recently rode in a car which, when started, lit up the dashboard display with the message “Correct tire pressure.” That took a moment to decipher, too. (Is the pressure correct, or am I supposed to correct it? And if you have sensors in all the tires to tell me that one’s flat—why not mention that info in the error message?) Evidently clearly stating “your tire is flat” is a big challenge for car designers...

zubairq 7y ago

I love this and I will try to make our product, yazz Pilot abide by these principles

munificent 7y ago

> Technology should require the smallest possible amount of attention The challenge — and I believe this is one of the fundamental challenges of the Information Age — is that the business model of most companies making tech today is that user attention funds the development of the technology. Every ad-driven business rests on this trade: We give you software X and in return you give Y% fraction of your attention. We sell that attention to company Z which pays us in cash. Tech from these companies cannot reduce the amount of attention the software consumes without directly affecting their bottom line and their ability to deliver tech to users in the first place.

danfang 7y ago
I would like to think we’re heading toward a future where people will want to pay for products and services to reclaim their attention - as opposed to using free ones that deliberately track and optimize for your engagement. The past 15 years of social media has been a terrible experiment in attention-driven business models. I’d like to think I’m helping buck this trend with my current project - a subscription based social network called Thread - https://get.thread-app.com https://get.thread-app.com
- jkestner 7y ago
  I'd like to think that too, but most people don't have the money or inclination for calm tech. We want distractions from the uncomfortable truths, and Facebook is happy to provide distraction with comfortable "truths."

jes5199 7y ago

Calm Tech is one of those ideas that's been in floating around for decades but has never quite gotten the attention it deserves (... sort of a funny paradox, "pay attention to making tools you don't have to pay attention to"). This article doesn't mention some of the old standard examples: Live Wire was a sculpture at Xerox Parc that twitched every time some number of network packets went through the office's router - you could get an intuitive feel for how much load was on the system. There's an X Windows applet called "LavaPS" which shows all your unix processes as colored blobs in a lavalamp, sized by memory footprint, floating to the top by age. It gives you a quick impression of what your computer is doing - is one webserver process eating your whole core? Or are you getting forkbombed by thousands of little ones? Those look really different. The definitive works on Calm Computing are a paper written by Mark Weiser (RIP) in 1996, "Designing Calm Technology" (which has unfortunately fallen off the internet) and an O'Reilly book called "Calm Technology" by Amber Case (the Cyborg Anthropologist) Ideally we'd go calmer than a "status light" or "status tone" - those are still pretty active! What can you convey with the color of a Phillips Hue bulb that changes slowly?

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Status tones made me immediately think of Star Trek. Imagine what if everything around you used status tones - the ambience will start to resemble that of a starship bridge in Star Trek - lots of things constantly humming and beeping in the background in a calming way (until there's some emergency, that is).
GuiA 7y ago
> a paper written by Mark Weiser (RIP) in 1996, "Designing Calm Technology" (which has unfortunately fallen off the internet) https://people.csail.mit.edu/rudolph/Teaching/weiser.pdf https://people.csail.mit.edu/rudolph/Teaching/weiser.pdf ?
- andai 7y ago
  And html version :) https://www.karlstechnology.com/blog/designing-calm-technology/ https://www.karlstechnology.com/blog/designing-calm-technolo...

arthurofbabylon 7y ago

I particularly appreciate this -> "Technology should make use of the periphery... A calm technology will move easily from the periphery of our attention, to the center, and back." And this -> "Machines shouldn't act like humans. Humans shouldn't act like machines. Amplify the best part of each."

mkadlec 7y ago

Adheres to Tethics.

chrismorgan 7y ago

A technical issue on the website: html { overflow-y: scroll; } body { overflow-x: hidden; } This makes both the <html> and <body> elements scrolling areas, so that you see two scrollbars (the outermost one disabled), and keyboard scrolling doesn’t work until you click within the body. Simplest fix is to shift the overflow-x: hidden to the html element, or remove it altogether.

boomlinde 7y ago

The vast majority of technology doesn’t need to notify you or somehow artificially announce its status. It seems strange, then, that a site on calm technology primarily concerns technology that does, devoting a good portion of the page to promoting ”calm communication” through buzzing, beeping and blinking. We should instead question whether we need the information that is being communicated in the first place, because even a colored LED or a soft haptic buzz can be stressful when we know what they mean. Maybe we should minimize the use of such technology instead. In my view, calm technology only functions when you use it. It answers your questions or solves your problems only when prompted to do so. Maybe a robot vacuum cleaner that beeps on faults and vacuums on its own initiative is helpful technology, but with alternatives that won’t have any reasons to steal your attention I can’t say that it’s calm technology. IM with a soft haptic buzz to notify you of the receipt of a message may again be immensely helpful, but an email account that I check myself when I feel like reading messages is more calm. If your life seems calmer when you know exactly when you’ve received a message regardless of what you are doing at the time or the nature of its content, you should perhaps think of how to lead a calm life before worrying about whether a pleasant beep or a soft buzz is the best way to direct your attention to it.

Razengan 7y ago
> We should instead question whether we need the information that is being communicated in the first place, because even a colored LED or a soft haptic buzz can be stressful when we know what they mean. Maybe we should minimize the use of such technology instead. This is why I love Apple for pretty much eliminating blinking lights in their devices, while other manufactures of laptops etc. still don't seem to get it. The only lights remaining in my room at bedtime are the power strip and external hard disks, and even they can be annoying.
m-p-3 7y ago
I have a dashboard at work to help me monitor a bunch of systems, but I still have a small BlinkStick LED cube attached to a Raspberry Pi Zero (probably overkill, I used what I was comfortable with) and it changes the LED color depending on a system status warning or failure. I already receive enough email that I filter to different categories, but having the LED bring my attention to the right place is way less stressful IMO.

dpflug 7y ago

I realize I'm well late to this discussion, but Huginn seems to be a good tool for this: https://github.com/huginn/huginn https://github.com/huginn/huginn

mrarjen 7y ago

Wish my Sony headphones had this for when switching modes or battery low indications. Currently it will mute all sound and speak in a voice regarding what is going on with limited info, instead of some clear beeps. Get to the point tech!

teddyh 7y ago

This seems to be a continuation of “Designing Calm Technology” by Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown in 1995: https://calmtech.com/papers/designing-calm-technology.html https://calmtech.com/papers/designing-calm-technology.html

p0nce 7y ago

How about Calm businesses and Calm codebases. "Code should need the least possible amount of knowledge and attention"